24 ALEXANDER GORDON, THE ANTIQUARY. 



pulled it down for materials wherewith to build a mill-dam on the 

 River Carron. The river whose banks it had made memorable from 

 the days of Nennius, if not of Agricola, avenged the sacrilege by 

 sweeping away the dismembered sacellum; and so Sir John Clerk, 

 after " cursing the Gothic Knight with bell, book and candle," did 

 the best he could to reproduce the lost relic on the banks of the 

 North Esk. A noteworthy little incident, highly illustrative of 

 Scottish character, is mentioned by Dr. John Hill Burton, who 

 himself remembers it being brought as a charge against a candi- 

 date for the representation of a Scottish county, certainly more than 

 a century after the base deed was perpetrated, that he was a des- 

 cendant of the desti'oyer of Arthur's Oon ! 



There was much to be pondered over by the Laird of Pennycuik 

 and his industrious brother antiquary. There had been a basso- 

 relievo visible on the time-worn archway of Arthur's Oon, as like to 

 an eagle with expanded wings as was that over Monkbarns' own 

 doorway to the Abbot of Trotcosey's mitre ; only, as Gordon feels 

 bound to confess, " age and time, and perhaps the same barbarous 

 hand that erased the letters, may have defaced it, but even now part 

 of the body and one of the wings may be faintly discerned." Here 

 again was subject matter for many a solemn conclave. Gordon sums 

 up a grand array of exhaustive arguments thus : " But besides all 

 this. Dr. Stukeley has well observed that time has left Julius Agri- 

 cola's very name on the place, as entire as the btxilding, seeing it 

 goes frequently under the appellation of Julius Hoif, or house ; and 

 if ever these initial letters I. A. M. P. M. P. T., mentioned by Sir 

 Robert Sibbald, were engraved on a stone in this building, it may not 

 be reckoned altogether absurd that they should bear this reading, — 

 Julius Agricola magnce 2yietatis monnmentum j^osidt temjjlum. But 

 this the reader may either accept or reject, as he pleases. However, 

 I think it may as probably be received as that inscription on Cali- 

 gula's Pharus in' Holland, which, having these following letters, 

 C. C. P. F., is read Caius Caligula pharimi fecit.'" Here, it can 

 scarcely be necessary to remind the reader, is the undoubted original 

 •of Aiken Drum's lang ladle. The Antiquary has demonstrated to 

 Lovel beyond all possibility of cavil that the Kaim of Kinprunes, 

 vthe Ccbstra pi-uinis of Claudian — in cons2ieGtu classis, in sight of the 

 Roman fleet, as Tacitus has it, — corresponds in all respects to the 

 .scene of Agricola's final conflict; and now is produced the grand 



